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If you'll read back you'll find that he was challenged to show he traded his own stuff successfully. He declined. 'Useful' is in the eye of the beholder and a VENDOR that's successful shouldn't have any problem showing they trade profitably. He apparently does have a problem showing it.
Personally, with all the experience I have had over the years with vendors, I don't believe any that say they trade successfully without proof.
Initially, I just downloaded all the video material from youtube but later I have realized that $349 is a small price to pay for a quality course when there are people selling black box signals for $200/months. The course will go up on Aug 1, but I have nothing to do with them (I am no shill). As a member of the video course, you can access Al's forums and ask questions, etc that non-paying visitors cannot. Believe me, I am as skeptical of trading teachers as anyone but Al Brooks, by his own admission, was a losing trader for 10-years, he teaches that 10-years of losing taught him.
What appeals to me about his price action system is that it is simple and effective. Better than any indicator or widget you might buy for the same price as his course. The downside is you must watch hours and hours of videos, often repetitive but clear and understandable.
Do you really want proof? Then ask for tax returns! A statement from trading would not prove anything. Hedge funds lose money and then they make money. Nobody will give tax returns including Trump. There can be myriad of very good reasons to say no when someone challenges a person of AL Brook's caliber! You want proof, go somewhere else where "proof" is offered. Will you believe such "proof"? It is on you. It is infantile to argue the way you naysayers do.
I don't know much about Al Brooks, but wonder is his course only teaching what he has learned over the 10 years of losing? Did Al manage to become consistently profitable after, and if so, for how many years?
In most professions, experience is everything and I don't see why trading would be any different.
I can see some value in paying that fee to learn about 10 years of his mistakes, but have found that in trading the only way to learn from mistakes was to make them yourself, ideally with 1 lot micros. I guess what I'm saying is I don't think paying the fee is a work around to skip the mistakes stage and move on to the consistently profitable stage. You may end up learning about his mistakes rather than learning from them.
I've tried learning from Mack's PAT, and initially like many beginners found the promise of simple and effective price action very appealing. For a few months I thought I had it all figured out as my account balance grew. It wasn't until blowing up the account I realized there's a lot more to discretionary chart trading than price action.
Is comparing Al Brooks to Trump refusing to provide tax returns supposed to be reassuring? What about all the previous presidents that have provided their tax returns?
Hedge funds, like everyone soliciting investment, are requirement by law to provide historical returns. Not quite sure how this example fits into your narrative.
Most professionals agree to the value of tape reading i.e. price action. There is no question about that! How Al teaches that is the issue, repetitious? definitely. dry, maybe a bit, long? yes, at places, comprehensive? definitely! Why he refuses to show statements is not known to me. Does that prove that he is a charlatan or fake? NO! He has the right to refuse and the skeptic has the right to buy a "proven" course with fake statements for ten times the price.
I agree with you. Vendors have the right to do whatever they want, after all they are selling themselves. And prospective customers have the right to ask whatever questions they want. If there's a meeting of the minds, a deal is made.
I recently purchased Al's video course and am about 75% through it. It's been interesting to dredge through this thread and read all the comments from people who seem to have little idea what his course is.
First, his course is not a system. He does not give you a set of rules cast in concrete that you are expected to execute. What he does do is give you a deep understanding of the market cycle and how to identify certain repeating patterns, so that you can use these clues to figure out what kind of market you are in (breakout, channel, trading range) and how you might trade it.
He is upfront that there is no certainty in markets, and introduces the concept of probability and the importance of structuring trades that will have a positive expectation over many repetitions. His course is a tough slog, jam packed with scenarios and examples. Al is definitely detail oriented and makes ample use of repetition to drive home his message. If you want a quick set of trading rules then this is not the course for you. Fortunately you can watch the 100 hours of material at 1.5 or 2x speed.
I think his course, while very long, will require re-watching some of the key videos multiple times to make sure it sinks in. There are many nuances and often you are playing the percentages and might get surprised. To get good at Al's approach will require a long commitment that I can see many would balk at. Much easier to chase the next shiny indicator.
His course doesn't really give much insight into how he is trading. He does start with a brief description of his time as an MD, his losing years, his preference for trading over medicine, and his frustration with being conned by scam artists. He then mentions that things did not turn around for him until he removed all the indicators (except for his 20 ema) and concentrated on finding patterns in the price action. I get the impression that he has saved and dissected every ES chart, bar by bar for the last 25 years.
He does say several times that most traders would do well to stay away from scalping as their main approach and would do better with swing trading as you can go for 2, or 3x your risk, or more. The problem with scalping is to be profitable, you need to win 90% of your trades. A couple of bad ones will put you in the hole. Much better to go with swing trading where the probabilities are 40-60% and you can shoot for a greater than 2:1 RR.
He also says that people who are not yet consistently profitable should be trading their 'I don't care size', which for many would be 1 micro-lot.
May be I've drunk the cool-aid, but I think the course is providing me value way beyond the cost. I'm definitely more choosy about my trades and more aware of what the market is doing since I started it. It certainly won't be for everyone, especially if you don't like Al droning through a 100 hours of material in exhaustive detail. If you want to get serious about price action I don't know of anyone else who comes close though.
All I can tell you is what I hear in the course. His recommendation is most people won't be good enough to scalp and would have a better chance of success at swing trading.
It's possible that he is scalping in his personal trading, I don't know. I imagine with his encyclopedic knowledge of price action, he might be one of the few that could pull it off consistently. But that would be speculation on my part.
He does say that scalping can be more stress inducing than swing trading.
You've mentioned Mack in posts before, I believe. Mack has a somewhat cut-down, simplified version of Brooks, taking a few things out without the rest. (This is not meant as a knock against Mack, and there are traders here who use his methods and swear by them. Just a comparative comment, as a point of reference.)
By most people's definition, Brooks is "scalping," that is, taking short-term trades, many in a day. By Brooks' definitions, he does both scalps (very short-term and for smaller profits) and swings (larger expected profits.) It's a matter of word definition and usage. He never holds overnight, so that is not swinging by some definitions.
One crucial point is that it is impossible to understand Brooks, in my opinion, without understanding his views on "context," the larger picture of what is going on at any one time. It is common for people to read Brooks looking for signals and particular trade entries and miss the contextual part, which is what he thinks lets you see whether a given trade has potential or not in the first place.
I'm not trying to encapsulate Brooks here, a difficult operation, just clarify your question about scalping, according to Brooks, and to make the point about context.
My view is that people often want to read Brooks for signals, then try things like "second entries" where second entries are not reasonable in terms of the context, and give up on it. Some do get into it the way Brooks intended (or the way I think he intended anyway), and some of them succeed as traders. A few people here on FIO have been successful with Brooks -- one who comes to mind is @Pa Dax, who has a journal here (although he is posting much less to it now.)
It is also true that Brooks can be a difficult read. I have read (or actually tried to read) several of his books, and I did take the trading course. It is comprehensive in terms of his method, and it can be maddening in terms of his obsessive detail. I think I have posted in this thread at some point and don't want to repeat that now. It will require an effort, and there is a lot in it. Otherwise, it is up to the trader what they can get out of it, and out of Brooks generally. It would be a good idea to review some of his webinars on this site, and in fact there is one scheduled for Tuesday, 7/28/20, tomorrow, at 4:30. Webinars are always recorded for later viewing.
I don't use Brooks' method, by the way, and honestly it's partly because I never quite understood it. This is probably at least in part due to my own failings (certainly my own lack of patience -- did I mention that he can be a hard read? ), and in part because everyone has their own basic outlook, and mine, while sometimes aligned with Brooks, is not always. A given person might or might not find it clicks for them, as is true for a lot of things.
A long response, when I didn't really mean to say much, but I"m like that sometimes.
Anyone who wants to see Brooks' method being used daily, and successfully, might want to check out @Pa Dax's journal, here:
So here goes with my trading journal - after coming off of trading Dax futures, I've decided to move to a more structured, higher volume, less slippage future. I'll be looking at the FGBL in this log, but I'm also eyeing the CAC40 …
I have found reading his journal rewarding, and a good illustration of the fact that many methods, often totally different, can work just fine in the hands of traders who have mastered how to make them work, for them. The "for them" part is always crucial, in my view. It has also been interesting to see it evolve over time, as any good trader's naturally would.
Bob.
When one door closes, another opens.
-- Cervantes, Don Quixote
Thanks for the mention Bob - and indeed. there should be postings in my journal on how I approached trading price action. The key is to understand price action so that you can see and take signals and trades yourself. I believe that is what Al is teaching more than when this happens, do this. It's all about seeing what price tries to do. Don't want to criticize someone who is trying to make an effort but let's say it like this: even if I mastered it, I could never be profitable with Mack.